At least three people were killed in a Russian bombing attack on Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, on Saturday afternoon, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
Another 52 people were wounded in the attack, Kharkiv mayor Ihor Terekhov said. Four aerial bombs were launched against the city, damaging residential buildings, shops and public transport stops, said Kharkiv’s regional governor Oleh Syniehubov. He said four of the wounded were in serious condition.
“This Russian terror with guided aerial bombs must and can be stopped. Bold decisions from our partners are needed so that we can destroy Russian terrorists and Russian combat aircraft where they are,” Zelenskiy wrote on the messaging app Telegram.
Zelenskiy said last month that Ukraine still urgently needs at least seven more Patriot missile systems to fend off Russian strikes against the power grid and civilian areas, as well as military targets, with devastating glide bombs that wreak wide destruction.
Russia had also continued to target Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with a new barrage of missiles and drones overnight, officials in Kyiv said. The attacks damaged energy facilities in the south-east and west, and injured at least two workers.
Ukraine is struggling with a new wave of rolling blackouts after relentless Russian attacks on energy infrastructure that started three months ago took out half the country’s power-generation capacity. Ukraine’s air defences intercepted 12 of the 16 missiles and all 13 drones launched by Russia, the air force said.
State-owned power grid operator Ukrenergo said the strikes damaged equipment at facilities in south-eastern Zaporizhzhia and the western Lviv region. Two energy workers were injured in Zaporizhzhia when a fire broke out at an energy facility, according to regional governor Ivan Fedorov.
With no major changes reported along the 1,000km (600 mile) frontline, where a recent push by the Kremlin’s forces in eastern and north-eastern Ukraine made only incremental gains, both sides have taken aim at infrastructure, seeking to curb each other’s ability to fight in a war that is now in its third year.
Moscow’s overnight attack on Zaporizhzhia and Lviv followed Ukrainian military strikes on three oil refineries in southern Russia overnight into Friday.
Air defences destroyed five drones over the Sea of Azov and the country’s western Bryansk and Smolensk regions, the Russian ministry of defence said. A man was killed in shelling of Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, according to regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.
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The governor of eastern Ukraine’s partly occupied Donetsk region said on Saturday that Russian attacks had killed five people and wounded seven the previous day.
In the Russia-controlled part of the region, Moscow-installed governor Denis Pushilin said three people were killed and four were injured in shelling by Ukrainian forces on Saturday morning.
A policeman was killed in the partly occupied region of Kherson as a result of a Russian drone attack on a checkpoint, the Ukrainian national police said.